“I couldn't add to it,” he exclaimed, almost fiercely, “so I went to Vernon.”
“Why?”
“Sergius—to warn him.”
There was a dead silence. Even the rain was hushed against the window. Then Sergius said, in a voice that was cold as the sound of falling water in winter:—
“I don't understand.”
“Because you won't understand how I have learnt to know you, Sergius, to understand you, to read your soul.”
“Mine too?”
“Yes; I've felt this awful blow that's come upon you—the loss of Olga, her ruin—as if I myself were you. We haven't said much about it till yesterday. Then, from the way you spoke, from the way you looked, from what you said, even what you wouldn't say, I guessed all that was in your heart.”
“You guessed all that?”
Sergius was looking directly at Anthony and leaning against the mantelpiece, along which he stretched one arm. His fingers closed and unclosed, with a mechanical and rhythmical movement, round a china figure. The motion looked as if it were made in obedience to some fiercely monotonous music.